Tuesday, July 27, 2010

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Street Date: 7/27/10

Raspberries' leader's first three solo LPs sprawled across 2 CDs. Each of these records features some pop gems and a full blown, overproduced stinker or two.

Personally, I like his solo stuff. No, it's not the crunchy, power pop of his former band, but if you could separate the two careers, Eric Carmen still had it for these three records, at least when he wasn't whining. Check out "No Hard Feelings," "She Did It," and one of my fave Eric tunes, "Nowhere To Hide."

Live document of the Grammy winning singing/songwriting blues guitarist's February performance at Mobile's Saenger Theatre. Can't really pinpoint just what it is about Robert Cray that irks me, especially since I love the genre and so many love the man. But I've tried for years and nothing seems to work.

Produced by Ethan Johns, and featuring special guests Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Booker T. Jones, famed panty-catcher and powerhouse vocalist Tom Jones is back with an album of blues and spirituals, and holy moly, does it kick some ass!

He doesn't sound much different from his heyday on Parrot Records, and the bare-bones production leaves plenty of space for the listener to get inside. Tom Jones sounds strong and inspired on this soulful collection tunes from the likes of Bob Dylan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Willie Dixon, among others.

15 comments:

Troy
said...

Hey thanks for the heads up on the Mark Olson disc for a penny. I'm a huge Jayhawks fan and while not a big fan of Olson's solo stuff, I did really like his last one, 'Salvation Blues'. For a penny, I'm definitely going to give the new one a try.

I'm with you on Cray. Something's missing, it just doesn't work. I know lots of blues fans, nobody listens to him; there's something empty about his stuff.

I saw a Tom Jones concert on teevee a year or so back, just put it on for a second to have a laugh and ended up watching the whole 90 minutes. His band was exceptional and he was great. Even when he rapped - seriously. It was surprisingly fantastic.

Nice to see they continue to pick SRV's bones. The similarity to Hendrix continues even in his death.

There are some pretty good songs on those solo LPs by Eric Carmen. I saw him on 2 consecutive nights at the Bottom Line in 1975. He did the whole 1st solo album and all the Raspberries hits. He had 2 drummers, one was Jim Bonfanti from the old group. Very powerful sets, kind of blew me away at the time. Ahhh, those were the times.

I would never even think of listening to Tom Jones. He was just the guy with a TV show and whose female audience members would throw various pieces of underwear at him during his concerts. A while back you included "Bama Lama Bama Loo" in one of your downloads. My ears perked up. Now based on your recommendation I took a listen at the new album. Completely changed my perception of him. Here's a 70 year old guy putting out some kick ass stuff, "Burning Hell" being my favorite. Thanks for opening my ears.

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